Just after announcing the retirement of the FairPoint brand, Consolidated Communications announced broadband upgrade plans for their northeast markets. These Consolidated broadband upgrades will improve broadband speeds to over 500K locations in former FairPoint markets.
The upgrades are courtesy of fiber network expansion in these markets and will add gigabit capable broadband speeds to about 100K locations, the company announced. Other locations can expect to see broadband upgrades that deliver two to three times the speed they received previously
“This is an exciting time for our customers as we significantly increase broadband speeds and make it easier to do business with us,” said Bob Udell, president and chief executive of Consolidated Communications in a press release. “Today’s announcement is a result of our commitment to improve broadband speeds after we closed on the FairPoint acquisition. We are excited about new tools and service enhancements to come.”
Currently, in some of these former FairPoint markets, Consolidated offers broadband tiers that range from 7 Mbps ($15/month with two-year contract) to 100 Mbps ($50/ month with two-year contract), with no monthly data caps. But availability is limited. These upgrades appear to be trying to make these tiers more accessible across the broader FairPoint footprint.
FairPoint did offer FTTP service in some of these markets, courtesy of their acquisition of Verizon lines back in 2008. Consolidated discussed their goal of updating about 100K FairPoint ‘Fios’ passings to gigabit capability back in June 2017. Udell noted then that upgrading these Fios passings represented Consolidated’s best opportunity for some “[q]uick wins.”
Image courtesy of flickr user Sean MacEntee.
